In hindsight, The Beatles could just as easily have been called The Chameleons. They started out by writing short and saccharine pop tunes, went in new directions as they changed their sound, and eventually recorded more complex and layered songs that proved how creative they could be. The longest Beatles songs fully displayed the band’s songwriting prowess and showed how much they developed in just a few years.
Note: We only included selections from Beatles albums and singles, so The White Album outtake “What’s the New Mary Jane” won’t appear on our list.
5. ‘A Day in the Life’
If you were making a list of the Beatles’ signature songs, then you’d have to include the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band closer on the list. John Lennon and Paul McCartney combined to write a tune that was the longest Beatles song to that point in their career.
“A Day in the Life” clocked in at more than five-a-half minutes, but that included nearly a minute’s worth of piano chord fade out and a 20-second sound experiment before the song finally concludes. So what might be the greatest Lennon-McCartney song is actually a relatively brief four-minute epic, which somehow makes it even more impressive.
4. ‘It’s All Too Much’
One of George Harrison’s most experimental songs might be the most sonically dense Beatles songs. The fuzzed-out guitar, humming Hammond organ, horns, and handclaps on top of drums and tambourine percussion weaved together in a tapestry that probably takes the title of the most psychedelic Fab Four song.
Not only is “It’s All Too Much” one of the longest Beatles songs, but it was also a non-stop romp. From the moment George said “To Jorma” just before a squall of feedback introduced the music, it hardly slowed down during its nearly six-and-a-half minutes.
3. ‘Hey Jude’
It was credited to Paul and John, but “Hey Jude” was almost entirely a Paul creation. Macca penned the tune in mid-1968 as an ode to Julian Lennon, John’s young son who was watching his parents go through a divorce.
Paul wrote it to empathize with Julian and help him realize things wouldn’t be bad forever. Still, John couldn’t help but find a message from his friend and bandmate in the lyrics.
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“Hey Jude” never made it onto a studio album. It had to settle for being a wildly successful single instead. It went to No. 1 in both England and the United States. “Hey Jude”became The Beatles’ most successful chart-topper in the U.S. as it spent nine weeks atop the Billboard singles chart. “Hey Jude” was so successful that it stopped a Paul-produced song from reaching No. 1 in North America.
2. ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’
One of the best Abbey Road songs was credited to John and Paul, but the bespectacled one did most of the work on “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” The tune was also a full spectrum moment for The Beatles. They penned short and sweet love songs as a nascent band. By the time they closed up shop, their tunes of love had turned more lustful, and “I Want You” was a prime example.
John kept the lyrics simple. He used just 15 words, but the lyrical simplicity turned out to be a bonus. It allowed the music to snake around the words and take on new shapes. There were the moments of relatively bare-bones R&B-lite, passages of psychedelic blues, and a haze of swirling sound at the end that approached proto-metal music. The free-form lyrics allowed the music to take center stage, resulting in a unique tune that was one of the longest Beatles songs.
1. ‘Revolution 9’
John veered away from pop songwriting when he met Yoko Ono. He began experimenting with avant-garde music and free-form sound collages with her. Yoko criticized John’s work on their experimental Two Virgins, but that didn’t stop him from placing the sound collage “Revolution 9” on The White Album.
The Beatles’ longest song starts innocently enough with a stark piano line. It quickly veered into a wild patchwork of tape loops, ambient noises, and odd bits of random voices floating through the cacophonous ether.
Given the room to expand and experiment with their sound, some of The Beatles’ lengthiest pieces were also some of their strangest songs. What separated the Fab Four from many contemporary bands of the era was that their fans happily explored those new territories with them without thinking twice.
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